


Time in a Circle Like a Wedding Ring

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Festivals, M/M, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Jack Harkness meets the Eighth Doctor at an alien festival.





	Time in a Circle Like a Wedding Ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



> Written for The_Wavesinger for the Just Married exchange, for the prompt "aliens think they're married."
> 
> Rated Teen for allusions to and discussions of sex. Quite a lot of them. I mean, it _is_ Jack Harkness. Nothing really explicit, though.

This party isn't quite what Jack was hoping for.

Oh, it's decent enough. The wine is excellent; the Xyrellian Empire is definitely living up to its reputation on that score. And he approves of the décor. This planet is home to an interesting variety of suggestively shaped plant life, and all of it is on just-this-side-of-tasteful display for the occasion, cascading down the walls and dripping from the ceiling and nestling in amongst the plates of tiny pink appetizers on the scattered stone plinths.

But for a festival of love it seems remarkably... tame. Sure, there are couples dancing close together, or making eyes at each other, or making out in nooks and corners. But it's nothing remotely like the unbridled orgy the tourist pamphlets promised.

Which is almost certainly all his own fault. Arriving a hundred years before the height of the festival's popularity to avoid the tourist rush seemed like a great idea, but apparently there are good reasons why it hasn't become that popular yet.

Jack contemplates his vortex manipulator for a moment. He could just jump ahead, see what things are like in a century or so. But...

But somehow, he can't quite be bothered. Screw it. This is fine. Maybe it's even kind of relaxing.

( _You're getting old, Jack_ , a voice whispers, somewhere in the back of his head. Shut up, he tells it, because no good comes of entertaining thoughts like that. It's not like he can stop getting older. Ever. And, anyway, the whole reason he's on this... this little vacation is to not think about things like that. Well, to not think about a _lot_ of things. But maybe especially that.)

Jack takes a diminutive pastry and chews it thoughtfully -- it's filled with something sticky and sweet, which he decides to take as a good sign -- as he watches the swirling currents of sentient life circulating around the room. Most of the attendees belong to one of the four main species that populate the Xyrellian Empire, but there are a few tourists, as well: some Draconians, a fair number of the neighboring Atatalavians, a scattering of humans.

Maybe he should start with the humans. Less interesting, but better odds of success. Idly, he picks their faces out of the crowd and considers them, one by one. The tall redheaded woman has a really nice smile, and the short, dark-skinned man next to her dances like he knows all kinds of interesting things to do with his body. Definite potential there. The pale, willowy, androgynous figure by the bar is intriguing, too, and, oh, that man with the light brown curls is--

_Is not a human at all._

Recognition hits him like a physical jolt, like a shot to the heart. (And he knows what that feels like; he's died from it more than once.) He's seen that face, in Torchwood records, in the results of all the frantic research he did after waking up on the Game Station alone.

"Doctor," he breathes. And from across the room, the Doctor looks over at him, almost as if he's heard, and stares at him with an expression of mild interest.

Jack breaks eye contact, swallows the rest of his pastry, and tries to decide how to feel. Some vestige of his Time Agent training insists that the most appropriate response is to worry about paradoxes, since this is clearly an earlier version of the man than either of the ones he's known. But compared to some of the paradoxes he's lived through, the possibilities of this one barely seem to rate.

He's almost just about made up his mind to decide it's wisest to keep his distance, anyway, when the sound of a hundred tiny bells rings out, and the festival's hosts start ushering people into the next room for the feast that marks the central event of the evening.

Jack allows himself to be swept along, dawdling just enough to prompt an enjoyably friendly, scaly hand on his shoulder to encourage him, and settles himself into the first available seat at longest of the heavy stone tables.

It isn't his fault that the first available seat happens to be next to the Doctor, is it? It's pure coincidence. Or maybe fate. Jack's never quite made up his mind on whether fate is an actual thing or not. But far be it from him to argue with it if it is.

Up close, the Doctor's new face -- _old_ face -- is breathtaking. Not just beautiful, although Jack's always thought that of the Doctor, but pretty as well. He's looking around the table, smiling in a vague, pleasant way at the other partygoers as they sip drinks, nuzzle one another, smile and laugh and generally enjoy this single, short moment of their single, short lives.

And then, as he turns towards Jack, the distant, dreamy look in those eyes snaps sharply into focus, and the lovely pale skin around them wrinkles up in an expression of thoughtful surprise.

"Yeah," says Jack. "I know. Sorry." He wonders, not for the first time, just what he feels like to the Time Lord's senses. When he tries to imagine it, he thinks of a maddening, unscratchable itch, or one of those swirling optical illusions that can make you sick if you stare at them too long. "I can find another seat."

But the Doctor waves him back down as he starts to rise. "No, no, no," he says, his features smoothing out and spreading into a wide, happy smile. "It's all right. It's interesting."

Jack looks into the Doctor's eyes, searches his face for signs of discomfort, of polite deception, but he sees none. Only honest curiosity. A pang of some unnameable, bittersweet feeling seizes him as, all at once he is struck by the vast, dark stretch of time that lies between them.

This is a Doctor who has not yet learned to fear unnatural alterations to Time.

Untroubled blue eyes flicker across Jack's body, and he can't help but feel a tiny thrill in response, even though he knows it's not his body the Doctor is interested in. Or, if it is, it's only his metaphysical properties, not his physical ones.

Well, presumably, anyway.

"What happened to you?" the Doctor asks, all guileless curiosity, still. 

Jack can't suppress his laugh, but he does, at least, manage not to say, _You did, Doctor_. Even though it's true in so very many ways. Instead, he says, "Little accident with the Temporal Vortex. I can't really talk about it."

"Oh," says the Doctor. "I see." And Jack wonders if he actually does, if he can sense the fingerprints of his own future on Jack somehow. He wouldn't put it past him.

"So," he says, covering up his thoughts with an attempt at his best flirtatious smile. "You come here often?" A festival of love and fertility hardly seems like the Doctor's scene. Jack wonders if he should be worried, if they're about to be interrupted by a monster or an invasion. Or a monster invasion.

"No," says the Doctor. "I was just passing through." Which could mean any number of things, knowing the Doctor -- to whatever extent Jack _can_ be said to know this version of the Doctor -- but something about the way he looks around the room as he says it makes Jack think that what it means, this time, is "My TARDIS randomly landed in a broom closet, and I thought I'd pop out and see what's going on." Not that that necessarily makes the invasions and monsters any less likely.

"Lucky for us," says Jack, flashing the smile again, and he doesn't even know why he's doing it now, but he can't quite seem to stop.

"Why?" says the Doctor, and Jack can't quite tell whether his tone is meant to be serious or not. "Do you need help?"

There are all kinds of possible answers to that, and some slightly off-color reply hovers just on the tip of Jack's tongue, but it dies there unspoken as he looks into the Doctor's face. He's smiling, interested. Maybe flirting, maybe not, quite, but interested in some sense, at least. But his eyes...

His eyes are the eyes of a man looking into the face of a complete stranger.

He's seen that expression in the Doctor's eyes before, he realizes, even if they were different eyes in a different face, and for a moment all he can do is sit there, his gaze locked on the Doctor's thinking, _am I really that forgettable?_

It goes on a few seconds too long, until the Doctor's expression starts to shift, almost imperceptibly, to something else, something puzzled and a little too perceptive, and they certainly can't have that, so Jack smiles again and says, "I just realized I never introduced myself. Captain Jack Harkness." 

He holds out his hand, and it's not until the Doctor leans forward to shake it that he wonders if he shouldn't have, if asking the Doctor to touch him is cruel thing to do. But the Time Lord doesn't seem bothered at all. His hand is cool in Jack's, as it has been in Jack's memory, and his occasional fantasies, for a very long time.

"I'm the Doctor. How do you do."

"Unusual name," Jack says as the Doctor releases his hand, because it seems like the sort of thing he ought to say.

"Is it? It seems ordinary to me. I suppose it's different if you don't hear it every day." He reaches in and pulls a packet of something out of the pocket of his coat, an odd garment that looks like someone's fantasy of the 19th century American West. "Jelly baby?"

"I think they're serving the food now, actually," says Jack, and sure enough, by the time he's finished the sentence, a server is setting down their plates. He thanks the being with a little wink, and gets a fluttering of Beta-Xyrellian neck ridge crests in return.

"Oh!" says the Doctor, shoving the package of candy out of sight again as his own plate appears in front of him. "Xyrellian moss oysters. I haven't had those in centuries." He pops one in his mouth with an expression of pure, childlike pleasure.

"They're supposed to be aphrodisiacs," says Jack. He's wondering, now, whether the Doctor even quite realizes where he is, and wondering even more whether he ought to tell him.

"You shouldn't believe everything you hear," says the Doctor. "If half the foods reported to be aphrodisiacs actually were, I doubt sentient beings would ever manage to get anything done."

Jack laughs at that without quite realizing that he's going to. He'd almost forgotten how easily the Doctor could make him laugh. "Well, anyway, they're good," he says, sliding one into his mouth. They are, meaty and salty and very faintly sweet. He can see why it's a taste one might associate with sex. Not that he doesn't have _lots_ of tastes he associates with sex.

The Doctor makes an "mmph" noise of agreement, his mouth full of moss oyster, and for a little while Jack just finds himself watching the man eat. Something about the uncomplicated happiness with which he's consuming the meal is slowly turning Jack's own pleasure into something softer and sadder. Something that leaves him wondering what might have happened if they'd ever met at the right time. If a Doctor who hadn't lived a little too long and done a little too much had met a Jack who hadn't either.

Foolish questions, probably. But they're distracting enough that it takes him a while to notice when the drinking goblet starts circulating around the table. He's vaguely aware, at first, of some celebratory noises a few seats away from him: cheering and clapping and those cute little hooting noises the Atatalavians make when they get excited. 

He doesn't see what it's about until the goblet arrives at the person two seats to his right, a diminutive Beta-Xyrellian with delicate purple ridges on her neck and a happy, toothy smile on her leathery face. She holds it up, a large gold-and-silver cup filled with some liquid whose pleasantly flowery fragrance Jack can smell from here, even over the earthy scent of the moss oysters.

The woman takes a small, careful sip, then grins at the Beta-Xyrellian man next to her and passes the goblet to him, their fingers lingering together for a moment on the cup. He drinks, too, and the people around them cheer. Jack claps along. He has no idea why taking a sip of anything merits applause, but, damn, those two look happy, in that young-and-in-love sort of way, and it's either celebrate with them or sit here feeling envious of them, and he knows which of those things sounds more fun.

The man finally takes his eyes off his companion for long enough to pass the cup on to Jack. Jack looks into it for a moment. The beverage, whatever it is, is a pure, pale blue, and it smells even more enticing up close. OK, then. What the hell. Jack takes a sip and is slightly disappointed to get no applause for it. After waiting for a moment, he shrugs, and turns to pass the cup on to the Doctor.

Who, apparently, has struck up a conversation with the person on his left at some point while Jack was distracted with the cup. Something about the local robotics industry. Which seems like a completely inappropriate topic for this kind of affair, unless it involves sexbots, which it doesn't sound like it does. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes a little, Jack taps the Doctor on the shoulder and holds the cup out to him.

"Hmm?" says the Doctor. "Oh." He sniffs at the cup, as if trying to analyze it chemically.

"Just drink some and pass it on," says Jack. "Seems to be some kind of custom."

The Doctor does so, swirling the drink around his mouth for a moment and smiling. "Yes, very nice, thank you." 

Applause and cheering again. What, did the Doctor do it better than he did, somehow?

The Doctor passes the cup to his roboticist friend, but the man does not drink, instead sending it on down the table, untouched. It's not until several chairs down that the ritual repeats.

"Wonder what that was about," Jack says.

"No idea. Perhaps we should ask," says the Doctor, but then the roboticist jumps back in with some point about circuit design that he was interrupted in the middle of, and they spin right back off into their technical discussion.

Jack sighs. Whatever he might have imagined coming from an encounter with a younger version of the Doctor, it probably wasn't this.

He digs back into his food, takes a long swallow from his wineglass, and goes back to contemplating his options for the evening.

He thinks maybe he's changing his mind. Maybe he doesn't want anyone who looks human at all.

By the time the servers start to clear away the plates and the diners begin to stand up and go back to mingling, Jack has managed to catch the eye of someone he'd like to meet. The tall, slim Alpha-Xyrellian across the table from him has been smiling at him since the thing with the cup, his wrinkled proboscis swaying gently across his face in manner Jack can't help but find suggestive.

He's heard those proboscises can be _very_ sensitive.

"Well," he says to the Doctor as the Alpha-Xyrellian rises from the table, "Good talk. I'll be seeing you."

He doesn't linger to listen to the Doctor's response. The Doctor is his past, he tells himself, and tonight is all about not dwelling on the past. Tonight is about finding pleasure in the moment. Because, when you come down to it, isn't that really all we have? Just an endless series of present moments.

Well. More endless for some of us than others. 

He's not going to think about that, either, or about the sidelong glance he catches the Doctor aiming at him as he stands. Instead, he strolls up to the Alpha-Xyrellian, his walk a confident glide, his eyes full of twinkling charm. It's a relief, really, to find himself falling back so easily into the familiar dance of seduction.

"Hello there," he says. "Captain Jack Harkness. I couldn't help noticing you seem to be here by yourself. You maybe want some help with that?" He grins, putting a little extra width into it. He's heard Alpha-Xyrellians find human teeth sexy.

The fellow's proboscis twitches, which Jack initially takes as a good sign, until it starts lashing back and forth angrily. Which is still kind of attractive, but a lot less promising. 

"Do you have no shame?" the Xyrellian hisses at him.

"No. None at all." He smiles again, tries to make it impish and disarming, but the man is having none of it.

"Really!" The man snorts, a low, bass rumble that takes a while to make its way to the end of his twitching nose. The wrinkled skin of his forehead wrinkles even further, in an unmistakable expression of disgust. "I mean, seeking external partners at a love festival is one thing, but _during the celebration of your marriage_? While your mate sits there and watches? You humans really are revolting."

Jack's brain tries very hard to process this and come up with a suitable response, but all he manages in the moment is a startled, "Huh?" as the Alpha-Xyrellian turns and strides away.

Damn. He has a really nice ass, too.

Well. Clearly there's some sort of misunderstanding here, but if at first you don't succeed...

Changing his mind again, Jack approaches the red-headed human he noticed earlier, but before he can even introduce himself, she greets him with a killer smile and says, "Oh, hi there! Hey, congratulations. I saw you drinking at the table. You two make a really cute couple."

"Thanks," says Jack, "but actually--"

"It's too bad," she says. "I noticed you in the other room earlier. If you weren't taken..." She eyes him up and down, appreciatively. "Well. You're both lucky guys."

"I think you've got the wrong impression," says Jack. "Honestly, we..." He hesitates, feeling like a bit of a jerk, somehow, for saying it, but at the moment it's sort of true, isn't it? "We barely know each other."

"Oh, well, you're hardly the first people to get married on an impulse like that," she says. "Worked out well for me, for a while. Hope you guys last longer than we did, though."

"No," says Jack, "you don't understand. We actually--"

But she's already looking away, towards a Beta-Xyrellian who's staring meaningfully and fluttering his neck crests at her from across the room. "Excuse me," she says, and she's gone.

Okay. Now he's starting to get annoyed.

He goes back to scanning the crowd. Well, hey, there's a very cute Draconian over there who seems to be eyeing him...

Oh, nope. Nope, he's talking to the Alpha-Xyrellian from earlier, and the way they're both eyeing Jack is anything but approving.

 _Fuck_. Why, some bitter and dishonest part of him thinks, does the Doctor have to ruin _everything_? 

Really, he should just give up. Go home... well, go _somewhere_ , anyway, and just take a nice nap. Or reconsider that earlier idea about jumping forward a century or so. Or any number of other possible alternative plans.

Instead, he goes in search of the source of his annoyance.

He finds the Doctor in the next room, sitting on a padded bench and sipping from a cocktail with a little umbrella in it -- Jack hadn't even thought they _had_ those here -- and watching the dancers. It's a complicated dance they're doing, full of touching and spinning and the suggestive swaying of variously shaped hips. It looks like fun. It also looks like something you have to do in pairs.

"So," Jack says, dropping onto the bench next to him. "Apparently people think we're married."

"Yes," says the Doctor. "I noticed."

"Oh, yeah? Thanks for telling me." Did he ever feel this irritated with his own Doctor, Jack wonders, or is it just this one? Or just the current circumstances. Probably that last thing, if he's honest, but it doesn't stop him from letting his frustration creep into his voice.

If the Doctor notices, he doesn't seem to mind. "I only just realized it, myself. Apparently that little ritual with the cup is meant to celebrate a recent marriage. Or to finalize one."

"I came here for sex, Doctor, not for marriage," Jack says. Marriage... may not be something he wants to think about again, not for a good long time. Maybe not ever, even knowing just how long "ever" is for him. Or especially knowing that. "You mind coming with me and helping clear up the misunderstanding?"

The Doctor makes a little humming sound, half thoughtful, half apologetic. "I'm... not sure that would actually help. According to a very nice Beta-Xyrellian I was just talking to--" He waves a hand at someone halfway across the room. "-- he's a poet, it's terribly interesting, I really must read some of his work --"

"Doctor..."

"Hmm? Oh, yes, well, it turns out that's all that's really needed here, in terms of a formal declaration. So, as far as these people are concerned, we _are_ actually married. Sorry." 

Well. That's that, then. Another wasted evening of his life. Not that he doesn't have them to spare, but still. "Great," he says. "Just great." He sits back on the bench, his body suddenly feeling heavy, and lets out a sigh that sounds childish, even to him. "All I wanted was a little distraction tonight. Guess that's too much to ask."

The Doctor turns towards him. "Distraction from what?" His voice is mild, idly curious, but Jack can see the familiar, keen intelligence in this stranger's seemingly innocent eyes. The Doctor's curiosity, he knows, is never idle.

 _From_ everything, Jack wants to say. _From memories. From living too long. From everyone around you dying while you go on and on. From hard choices and guilt and having to live with knowing what a bastard you can be. All things you'll learn soon enough, Doctor, if you haven't yet._

But he can't say any of that. So he says nothing. And, mercifully, the Doctor changes the subject. Sort of.

"You know," he says, "it takes me back, rather. I almost got married once before by drinking the wrong beverage. Or the right one, I suppose, depending on how you look at it. A lovely woman. Aztec." The Doctor's face goes distant for a moment, and he fiddles with the umbrella in his drink. "I always thought perhaps I should go back and see her again someday."

"Yeah. It's nice, when the people you care about want to see you again," says Jack. But the bitterness he feels when his brain forms the sentence is gone by the time it's finished leaving his mouth. It's been far too long, and far too much has happened since, for that particular old resentment to last. Instead, he feels only a sort of muted, melancholic envy. Which, he supposes, is kind of funny, if he's the one who's actually married the Doctor. Technically speaking.

"She had more influence on me than she ever realized," says the Doctor, and swallows the rest of his drink.

Jack watches the bobbing of his adam's apple in his smooth, beautiful throat, beneath his tipped-back chin. It's easier than trying to figure this conversation out. "That happens," he says, meaning to say nothing. "That definitely happens."

The Doctor sits his empty glass down on the table next to him, settling it gently among the flowers and the sweets. "So," he says, and there it is again, the casual tone and the too-keen eyes that turn it into a lie. "Past or future?"

"What?" Is... is the Doctor offering him a lift? 

"Are you from my past?" he says, "or my future? It was obvious as soon as I arrived that you recognized me. You were staring at me from across the room."

"Maybe I just thought you were hot," says Jack, but it's a feeble protest, and the Doctor ignores it.

"When I saw this," the Doctor continues, laying his hand on the vortex manipulator on Jack's arm, "I assumed you must be a Time Agent, sent to... Well." He smiles. "I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why a Time Agent might be interested in me."

Despite himself, despite how wrong-footed he is right now, Jack finds himself smiling back. " _Oh_ , yeah."

"Mmm." The Doctor pulls his hand back. Jack tries not to regret it. "But it's obvious you know me. Personally."

Jack opens his mouth to deny it, but, after all, this is the Doctor. There's never any point to contradicting him, especially when he's right. So he closes it again, the words still unsaid.

"The obvious assumption is that you're from my future. But seeing as I've had some memory problems lately, the past is also a possibility. So, which is it?"

"Future. Which is why I didn't just come up and say, 'Hey, hello again, Doc!' I mean, you know how it is."

"Oh, yes. Funny looks, potential paradoxes, all that sort of thing."

"Plus," says Jack, and he's a little surprised by quite how much it hurts to say, "you don't recognize me when we meet."

The Doctor's eyebrows shoot up at that. "Really? I'd think you would be much more memorable than that. I've never seen anything quite like you before. I usually remember things I've never seen before. Are you sure I'm not just a very good actor?"

He can't help but laugh a little at that. Something about that earnest, innocent egotism is just so very... _Doctor_. "I'm pretty sure," he says. "Although I admit, it's hard to know, with you. You _are_ a man of many talents."

"Well," says the Doctor, and for a moment his smile seems to fill Jack's entire field of vision. "There you go, then."

Jack shakes his head. "You do realize that two seconds ago you weren't sure you hadn't already met me and forgotten?"

"Oh, as I once said to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a foolish consistency is..." He waves a hand airily. "...extremely foolish."

"I don't think that's the quote."

"He might have punched it up a little afterward," the Doctor says, still smiling.

And, really, there are all kinds of possible explanations, even if the Doctor _wasn't_ just pretending not to know him, later. These mysterious memory problems of his. Retcon. The universe trying to protect itself from paradox. The fact that very soon, from the Doctor's point of view, time and reality are going to be pulled apart and shattered and put back together in ways that may never be entirely the same.

For someone who doesn't know him very well yet, the Doctor seems to follow the course of Jack's thoughts -- in general, if not in the specifics -- remarkably well just from looking at his face. He nods approvingly at whatever conclusions he reads there.

"Okay," says Jack, in response to what, exactly, he isn't entirely sure. "Okay."

For a minute or two, they sit there in a strangely companionable silence, looking out across the room, at all the people drinking, dancing, talking, kissing. Living their short, bright, beautiful lives, their moments passing one after another, all in a row, never repeating, never to be seen again.

Finally, the Doctor moves, straightening his back and slapping himself on the knee, like a man who's just had a thought, or come to a decision. "You said you were looking for distraction?"

Jack turns back towards him. "Doctor, you know I'd let you distract me any time," he says, "but a Time Lord and a timeless, immutable Fact of existence? Never thought you were that kinky. I mean, not that I'd say no..."

"You don't know everything about me," says the Doctor, and good lord, Jack was only joking -- well, mostly joking -- but was that actual _flirting_? "But as it happens, that's not what I meant."

"Okay?" Jack doesn't dare to say anything more than that, not until he figures out where this is going.

"Well," says the Doctor. "Really, I don't think either of us belongs here. Especially not under the present circumstances. I was wondering if you might like to go somewhere else? A little adventure, all of time and space. I expect you know the sort of thing."

Jack blinks. "Yeah," he says. His voice comes out quiet enough that he isn't entirely sure the Doctor can hear it over the sounds of the party. "It's been a while, but, yeah, I do."

"How about it, then?" The Doctor grins at him, and this time Jack almost thinks he can see something shyly hopeful in it. "I'm on my own at the moment, and married people ought to spend at least some time together, or so I've heard."

Married. Why does the word suddenly feel more significant now, as if what the Doctor's talking about is something more serious than an irritating misunderstanding with a cup? It's ridiculous. 

Ridiculous. Except what do you call it, when the person who has made you into who and what you are, the person whose existence is always somewhere at the core of your own, no matter how long you live or how far apart you get, or whether you've even met each other yet... When that person sits next to you and looks into your eyes, and asks you to run away with him, if only for a while?

"All right," he says. "All right. Yes. I do."


End file.
